


slowly, at the start

by PianissimoPi



Category: Black Mirror
Genre: Eventual Relationships, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-03-10 01:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13494110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PianissimoPi/pseuds/PianissimoPi
Summary: it feels like it's all happened before, and that's what scares him, even more than the imminent death that's awaiting all of them if they don't succeed.or: an amnesiac, a police detective, a girl who's supposed to be dead, a disgraced nca officer, and a former employee to one of the most powerful companies in the uk go on a roadtrip





	1. one foot in sea, and one on shore

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not 100% sure where i'm going with this, but i've had this idea ever since i saw 'hated in the nation' and i've been sick all week so i decided to write it. hopefully this is somewhat comprehensible!
> 
> (i really hope i don't have to change the summary after writing more)
> 
> chapter title from _much ado about nothing_ by william shakespeare

At first, pain is all there is. Pain shooting down his arms, pain piercing his heart, pain lodging its way through his brain. _Stop,_ he thinks desperately, clawing at his head, _just make it stop._

And suddenly, it does.

*

He comes to in bits and pieces. One time, he catches a snippet of a conversation - about something blue? - but it ends before he can process any of what he heard. Another time, he can almost make out shadows moving behind his eyes, but he has no idea who they are or what they’re doing. 

And then he wakes up, gasping for breath as he opens his eyes to a bright white room. There’s a dull throbbing coming out of his left arm and he grasps blindly for it, pulling out a thin tube, which he stares blankly at until he hears an alarm blaring overhead. _Hospital,_ his brain supplies helpfully, _I’m in a hospital_. But that doesn’t make sense, because he can’t remember getting hurt and he can’t remember coming here and now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t remember anything at all.

Panic courses through him, white hot, and his head is killing him and all he can think is that he needs to get out right now. But then the room is filled with orderlies, all dressed in the same painfully bright white as the room and someone shouts, “He’s going into shock!” and then everything goes black again.

*

He opens his eyes and there is a woman sitting on a chair next to him, checking her phone. Her hair hangs over her face, obscuring her from sight and he wonders if he should say something, if he’s supposed to know who she is. The woman looks up as he weakly attempts to sit up, her face morphing from nervous to surprised to angry all at once. 

“Nick, you fucking idiot, I can’t believe you would do something so completely - ” She cuts off abruptly, peering at him intensely. He shrinks back, a little cowed by the sheer force of emotion coming from her, and she recoils almost imperceptibly from him. “You have no idea who I am, do you.” It isn’t a question.

“Am I supposed to?” His throat scratches painfully and the words come out pinched and rough. 

She doesn’t answer him, just presses a button on the monitor next to him and a tinny voice cheerfully calls out, _“Call from Room 67B. Please come at your earliest convenience.”_

He looks around, past the woman and out through the glass and into the hospital outside. It’s all alien to him - the bustle of people, the beeping of machines, the steady drip of fluids in small, thin tubes like the one he pulled out of himself when he first woke up - and yet part of him feels like he should know it. 

“Where am I?” He doesn’t look at her as he asks the question, just stares out the window. 

She doesn’t answer and after a moment, he turns to look at her. She’s on her phone again, typing something and when she’s done, she sighs and puts it away in her purse, the entire time not looking him in the eye. “St. Columbus Hospital. London.” she adds when she sees his confusion. Her expression changes again, something he can’t place. “You really have no idea what’s happened then?”

“Nope.” 

“Do you - ” she pauses and takes a slow breath, “Do you know who you are?”

He wracks his brain, searching for something, but nothing comes. The woman takes his silence as an answer and shakes her head angrily. “Fucking perfect is what this is. On top of everything …” 

She doesn’t elaborate on that, and he can’t work up the nerve to ask her. She gets up suddenly and walks over to the glass, peering out into the hospital. “You’d think that with such a high profile patient someone would come by now.” 

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Who did you think I was talking about, myself?” She turns to look at him and while her mouth is curved upwards into a semblance of a smile, her eyes are full of worry. She moves back to her chair, but doesn’t sit. The air seems to be buzzing with tension and anticipation and he shifts uncomfortably, feeling deep down he does not want to hear what she’s about to say.

She takes a breath, steadying herself, and says it anyways.

“A few weeks ago, there was this game. It was called the “Game of Consequences” or something like that, and it used this hashtag #DeathTo to find the most unpopular person on social media and killed them with ADIs. They’re robotic bees,” she adds, quickly, “and they were actually being used by the government to spy on us, so I guess they can stick it.”  
Her voice catches and he even though he can’t see her face, he knows that her story doesn’t have any sort of happy ending. “But these people weren’t the killer’s targets. His real targets were everyone that used the hashtag. All 387,000 of them.” She laughs derisively. “He was trying to teach us some sort of fucked up message and killed 387,000 innocent people. They never had a chance.”

“What does this have to do with me?” But he knows. He knows but he needs her to say it because there’s no way it’s true.

She sits down, finally, and looks him directly in the eyes. It’s somehow more unnerving than her standing. “You’re Nick Shelton. You work for the Met Police Department, Detective Sergeant actually. And during the investigation, you used the hashtag and a swarm of ADIs came to kill you.”

Words fail him and suddenly Nick can’t breathe. “That’s not possible,” he gasps. “Those bees, th-they killed everyone right? Why was I different?”

“You know most people would be happy after hearing they survived a swarm of killer ADIs that were virtually undefeatable, not questioning it.” There’s another ding on her phone, but she ignores it and keeps talking, though Nick notices her glancing at it more than a few times. “We were trying to shut down the program, so we were at the company that built the ADIs, Granular, and in the seconds before the killing of the Chancellor, we realized who the real targets were. But Li decided that the life of one very unpopular man was worth more than the lives of 387,000 others. So he shut it down and then everyone was killed.” 

She gets up again, seeming agitated, and begins pacing the room. His head is spinning, trying to take in everything she’s said as he tries to ignore the mixture of intrigue and revulsion that grows in his chest. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“You’re alive because you were in the right place at the right time. The head of the program had a device that killed the ADIs in the area and he happened to have one in a nearby room. But by the time he got back, one had already gotten to you.” She pauses by the window, shaking her head. “The way Scholes designed it, death was supposed to be painful. When the ADIs were deactivated, the pain knocked you out, I guess. Li almost didn’t let us call an ambulance. He must have realized that he was responsible for all of it and he was most likely to be charged with something. And Blue - ” 

She is cut off by an nurse entering the room and Nick sees her quickly wiping her eyes before turning to face her. Whoever this Blue was, they were clearly close to her. He has so many more questions he needs to ask her, so many more things that still don’t make sense, but after talking quietly with the nurse, she makes to leave.

“I didn’t catch your name,” he calls after her.

“I didn’t throw it,” she responds. If she wasn’t so tense, and the atmosphere so sombre, Nick thinks she might have smiled. But instead she says, “I’m DCI Karin Parke. Your boss. And friend,” she adds after a beat. 

He doesn’t say anything to that, just adds it to the growing list of questions he’ll ask her the next time he sees her. “So, see you later then, boss?” She doesn’t respond to that, but as Karin leaves, he thinks he catches the hint of a smile. He still feels a little lightheaded from everything he learned in the last few minutes, though, so he’s not sure.

_Now,_ Nick thinks, _it’s time to learn just how badly that robotic bee messed up my brain._

*

It’s a lot worse than he thought.

He has amnesia, that he knew, but he couldn’t have predicted the level of damage one little robotic bee could have caused. Decreased motor function, frequent headaches, possible paralysis, possible short term memory loss, possible impairment with hearing, speech, or vision - the nurse lists them all with a look of pity and awe. He almost starts to tune her out when she drops a bombshell on him.

“And because of the location of ADI, we were unable to remove it at this time,” she says, far too cheerful for the news she delivered.

Nick’s stomach drops, and suddenly he thinks he’s going to be sick. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“We found it far too dangerous to remove the ADI, so the doctor made the executive decision to leave it in for now. We are currently contacting other hospitals around the world to find a neurosurgeon who can remove it safely, but for the time being, it’s still in there.”

“Wh-what about the way it got in?” His head feels like it’s killing him and his breath comes in short panicked gasps. This can’t be happening. It makes no sense why would anyone leave a murder weapon in his brain, even a disabled one. 

She shakes her head, sadly. “By the time you got here, too much of the brain had begun healing around the ADI to have a safe passage out.” She pauses, and after glancing out the window, she leans in and whispers conspiratorially. “But some of us speculate that if Officer Li had called for an ambulance earlier, the damage would most likely have been less extensive and there is a significant chance that the ADI could have been removed.” She pats his arm, sympathetically. “You have a lot of support here. Most of us want to see the government prosecuted just as much as you do.” 

Before Nick can even process what she’s saying, she’s moved on to the outpatient procedure. But her words are still echoing in his brain, even when she’s long gone and he’s staring at the ceiling, chewing something that vaguely tastes edible. 

He had spent the afternoon flipping through channels on the hospital TV, trying to find more information on the ADI Massacre, as coined by UKN TV, but so far it’s been inconclusive. There’s a full investigation going on, and Karin Parke, Shaun Li, and Rasmus Sjoberg are all supposed to testify. He nearly laughed at the speculation that he would be subpoenaed as well, but he supposed that his amnesia wasn’t public knowledge. There is no mention of the mysterious Blue, which makes him wonder if he even heard Karin say their name. Besides, who names their child “Blue” anyways?

It hits him harder now, that he’s the sole survivor of the massacre and not because he was smarter or stronger but because of pure luck. If it hadn’t been for Karin and Rasmus, he would be just as well off as the other victims, lying dead in a government warehouse. _And if I’m not careful,_ Nick thinks ruefully, _all of this will have been for nothing_. His head throbs at that, a painful reminder of the dead ADI lying in wait in his brain. It seems like far too bleak of a thought to have over soggy vegetables and grey chicken but that is probably his life from here on out. 

He wishes that he could properly thank them, Karin and Rasmus, for everything they did. He had been too caught up in himself and the whole situation to fully process what she had done when she was there but after watching hours of news coverage of the event, he knows that she was a hero, even if the only person that thought so was him. Thanking Rasmus is more personal, especially because Nick reckons he’d be one of the only people doing so. According to UKN, Granular got hit particularly hard by public outrage and as person in charge of the ADIs, Rasmus was one of the most hated people in the country. To him, it comes across as just a little bit too ironic, how eerily similar it must seem to how things were before. But of course, he can’t remember how things were before, so the comparison probably isn’t accurate.

A knock on the door interrupts his thoughts, and calls “Come in,” before he remembers that his mouth is full of chicken and he probably looks like death. 

It’s Rasmus, who is just the person Nick was hoping to see. Rasmus clearly doesn’t feel the same, standing in the doorway and shifting uncomfortably as his eyes dart nervously around the room. He has the same agitated energy as Karin and it puts Nick on edge. Still, he plasters on his best smile, ignoring the little shoot of pain it causes, and gestures for Rasmus to sit down. 

He doesn’t, but he does move a little further into the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. “How are you doing?” Rasmus doesn’t look at him while he says it, but Nick appreciates the nicety regardless.

“I’ve been better. I wish someone told me how to open the blinds without getting up, though.” He means it as a joke, but Rasmus gives him a serious look. It takes him off guard and the smile drops off his face. “Wait, what’s going on outside?”

Rasmus doesn’t answer him, just walks over to window and pulls open the blinds, revealing the grey of London’s skies above and the mass of protestors below. Even from his poor angle, Nick can see some of the signs. _We want the truth_ and _Justice for the 387,000_ and _What REALLY happened on May 18th?_ and more, so many more. The entire block is covered with them, a buzzing, angry crowd of people. If he’s being honest, he’s glad he’s stuck up here and doesn’t have to go through them. 

“Are they here for you?” The other question remains unspoken, hanging in the air: _Or are they here for me?_

Rasmus shakes his head. “They didn’t seem happy that I was coming to see you. People seem to think that the government is trying to prevent you from testifying.” 

“Technically, Granular isn’t a government agency.”

“And technically, I’m not a Granular employee anymore.” He gives a self-deprecating chuckle at Nick’s shock and sits himself down at the chair next to him. “My job at the company disappeared the second the ADIs deactivated. And even so, I doubt Granular would want someone with my notoriety working there anymore. They’re under enough fire with their privacy deal with the government.”

“I’m sorry.” It feels pitifully insufficient, especially compared to Rasmus had been going through the last few weeks. Still, Rasmus gives him a small, sincere smile and that makes it all seem a little better. “I also wanted to thank you. You saved my life that day.”

Rasmus waves off his apology, but there’s a grateful look in his eye. His expression shifts suddenly, more cautious and guarded and Nick feels dread percolate in his stomach. “Unfortunately, I didn’t come here to talk about me. I need your help.”

Nick had a distinct feeling that his life was about to get a lot more complicated.


	2. if ever i did dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from _othello_ by william shakespeare

The more Nick thinks about it, it’s an awful - no, horrible - no, _catastrophically stupid_ plan. It hadn’t sounded great at the time - and he’s very glad he’s had time to think it over - but now he was seriously questioning how Rasmus had been the head of the ADI program if his idea to stop a mass environmentalist disaster is to go on a fucking _roadtrip_. 

(He had heard both those words from Karin, who’d had several choice words to say about Rasmus, Li, the Chancellor, and at one point, all of Britain. He knows it’s not his place to ask about Blue, so he doesn’t.)

He has a lot of time to think about it, though, since Karin is his only regular visitor, and even her visits come sporadically enough to make him wonder, secretly, if she’s only coming because she feels obligated to. Nick knows - or at least he hopes he does - that the repercussions of the ADI Massacre fell the heaviest on her, Rasmus, and Li, and Karin’s struggling with more than just public backlash and judicial review. Part of him hopes, selfishly, that they had been friends beforehand - truly friends, and not just coworkers. He can’t tell if the way she catches herself when she speaks a little too freely is because of his amnesia or because she’s forgotten he’s not someone else. 

Li had come to visit once, hat pulled low over his eyes and and collar popped to obscure his face. Nick had been cleared to move about, so he had been at the window, looking out over the unfamiliar skyline of a city he once knew and the ever dwindling mass of protesters below. His room was on one of the top floors, so there wasn’t really a risk of being spotted, but he still was careful. His nurse had warned him that the day he’d been brought in, the hospital was flooded with people waving signs and shouting about answers. When Li opened the door, Nick nearly jumped, thinking for a split second that he was about to be swarmed. But it was just Li, shifting uncomfortably in the doorway. His eyes darted around the room, hovering on the open window for just a second too long. Nick pulled the drapes shut, in a way he hoped looked natural. 

The two men stood there, until Nick cleared his throat. “Do you want to have a seat?” He had gestured to the chair by the bed, but Li shook his head sharply and Nick’s hand falls limply to his side.

“No, I’m fine.” Li glanced up at the TV screen and Nick realized, with growing horror, that Li’s own face was up there, in UKN’s constant _Breaking News_ segment about the ADI Massacre and its fallout. It was a clip he had seen before, an interview with Li about the impending trial. He rushed to turn it off and the silence that followed had been even more unbearable than the moments before. It’s almost laughable, that after so much time alone, Nick had nothing to say. He didn’t - and still doesn’t - know how to address Li and what he did to him. If Li was the person Nick saw on TV, or the person the public told him he is, or the person that he saw in front of him, nervously checking his watch for the third time in the span of a minute. 

“They want you to testify.” Li’s voice was low. When Nick glanced over at him, surprised both that he had spoke and what he had said, Li was looking up at the empty screen, as if he hadn’t realized Nick had turned it off. “The Supreme Court, the government, the people. Everyone’s calling for you to take the stand.”

A sharp laugh escaped Nick before he could think better of it. “Do they not realize I have no memory of any of it happening?”

“No.” That one word was enough to stun him into silence. “The people don’t know, the government barely knows, and the Supreme Court doesn’t believe you really have amnesia. Or they don’t think it’s as bad as the rumours make it sound.”

“Sounds like a shit storm out there.” 

Li smiled humorlessly, his eyes dark and calculating. “You wouldn’t know the half of it.”

Nick didn’t voice the question that had been lingering in his mind: _Do you believe the rumours?_ From what Karin had told him and what he had seen so far, Li was too cautious and too smart to answer that honestly. He thought he had finally pieced together why Li had come - not to check on him or express remorse or concern, but to see if Nick remembered what he had done and if he was going to press charges. 

He didn’t know what to do. He had nothing to say to Li. Every accusation Nick could have thrown at him, Li already knew, had already been told it by Karin, by the Court, by people he passed in the streets everyday. So he smiled as if he hadn’t been thinking that and made an excuse about needing to get some rest. Li had almost looked relieved when Nick ushered him out the door. 

Nick had not been relieved. Instead he had stared outside the window for another hour, watching the crowd as the rain pummeled down around them. It was then when he had realized that Rasmus’s plan was never going to work. He understood the symbolic significance of them all being together again and he’d been told that together they had been able to figure out Scholes plan. 

But something had nagged at him, in the hours that passed after Li had left, something that is still nagging at him as he lies in his bed, a week later, watching a light overhead struggle flicker to life. It’s a good metaphor for his life right now. Nick’s heard the doctors talk of discharging him soon; aside from amnesia, which isn’t going away anytime soon, nothing physically is wrong with him anymore. But there is the whole “only survivor of the ADI Massacre” thing, the fact that he’d probably get swarmed if he took one step outside of the building, and the harsh reality that he has nowhere to go to. 

Apparently his next of kin is listed as his sister, who hasn’t responded to any of the hospital’s phone calls. His address is probably floating around in the internet somewhere, so going back there is not ideal. And to top it all off, the third visitor he’d had - after Rasmus and before Li - was the Police Constable of the Met Police Department, who’d told him, through a lot of hand wringing and apologizing, that Nick had been fired. “It’s nothing personal,” he had assured Nick. “But to be frank, we need the best people we can working in the field. You lost years of training and experience, and it’s unfortunate, but the harsh reality we’re living in.”

If Nick were to ever leave the hospital, he would be a homeless, unemployed amnesiac, wandering the streets of London with no family, no friends, and the weight of a crisis that he can’t even remember looming over him. He’d most likely be hounded the rest of his life for answers that he can’t give. Which, if Rasmus’s theory about the bees is correct, won’t be that long.

In the end, Nick realizes as he’s picking up his phone, it’s not a choice at all. Glancing at the post-it note affixed to his desk, he dials Rasmus’s number. It rings for a while, but just as he’s starting to wonder if he’s dialed the wrong number, he hears Rasmus’s voice, groggy and weak from the poor connection. “Hello?”

“Rasmus? It’s me, Nick.” He takes a breath. “I wanted to let you know that I’m in.”

He can almost hear Rasmus smiling through the phone. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for such a short chapter after such a long break! this is more like a continuation of chapter 1, but the good news is that things are probably going to pick up in the next chapter. 
> 
> i've got a lot of exams coming up in the next two months, so i'm not sure if i'll be able to update until summer starts. if you want to drop me a line, you can find me [here!](http://the-cabeswater-five.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> me: how many bee references can i make without it being too obvious?
> 
> you can find me [here if you want to say hi](http://the-cabeswater-five.tumblr.com)


End file.
